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Chapter 21
She had a sweet humming song on her lips as she climbed up the stairs with RK's coffee. Somehow, just knowing he was back in the house made her feel a lot better. Just one glance at him was what she needed to reassure herself that he was fine. That everything was fine.
She was about to knock when she realized the door was open. She opened quietly, not wanting to startle RK in case he was already asleep. As she opened the door, she saw him standing at the other end of the room, his back to her. He was on the phone.
"Tony, this is RK."
...
"Hmm. Our contract for Mitasha was for three months, and it ends this week. You can come Tuesday evening as we discussed and take her. I will give her her share of money before..."
Words.
Just a few harmless words, and Madhu felt the the house of cards she'd built around herself hoping for some shelter collapse in an instant.
Her breath got struck in her throat. She wanted to leave, to move back, but her body had frozen on the spot.
Clack!
Her fingers must have given way as the tray fell from her hands. Hot coffee fell all over her, burning her skin, but Madhu didn't even gasp. Her soul was burning in a much stronger fire.
He turned as he heard the sound.
Rishabh. The man who was her hope until moments ago. She saw him, and then he dissolved in her vision as her eyes misted until he was no more than a faint fast-disappearing blur. Just like every ounce of hope she had painstakingly preserved.
"Madhu!" he called out, though his voice wasn't louder than a whisper. The sound of her name prompted her feet into moving again. She took a few steps back and out of the room.
"Madhu!" he called again, this time much louder, and started to walk towards her.
"Don't" she somehow said before turning and running back to her room.
****************
"Don't" he heard her say and he stopped. One of the pieces of the broken coffee cup cut the sole of his left foot, but he didn't notice.
He could hear an incredulity, a helpless plea in her voice. He could feel her raw pain in his skin from twelve feet away. He could feel his own heart sinking with the weight of a million tons of guilt. He stopped because he knew he couldn't help her, but he owed her at least the decency of her privacy when she broke down. He knew he had ripped a knife through her heart, but he also knew he couldn't stop the bleeding and at this moment it was going to be downright cruel if he followed her to watch her drown in the pool of her own blood.
She was strong, he knew. She was strong enough, he hoped. Because he for sure wasn't strong enough to watch his decision ruin the life of the one woman who had cared for him unconditionally.
The woman who had saved him. His Madhu.
Why?
A sigh escaped his lips as he knelt down on the floor. Why, he screamed again, as tears rushed in.
She wasn't supposed to find out like this. But perhaps it was good that she did. Because he had spent the last six hours wondering about how he was going to tell her and he couldn't find one word that he could utter that would make it sound okay that he had decided to send her back into the same hellish life he had found her.
A life he knew she didn't belong to or deserve.
"You cannot be the hero of her life, Rishabh," his lawyer had tried to explain to him earlier in the day, "but you're not the villain either. It's unfortunate, but you didn't do this to her. You just couldn't save her. But she isn't yours to save."
Why, he asked again wordlessly even though he knew there were no answers forthcoming. He broke down as the dripping blood from his foot slowly covered the ground around him.
Rishabh Kundra had never felt so helpless, so powerless and so wrong.
*********************************
Madhubala Malik was born 21 years ago in a small, lower-middle class family that consisted of just her parents and now her. Her mother was beautiful and Madhu had grown up to be just like her. They didn't have money but they had love and Madhu was the angel that filled Padmini and Balraj's lives with a lot of joy.
Padmini Malik loved her husband with a devotion so fierce, it consumed her. She gave up everything for him - her family, her education, her identity - but she didn't care. She loved him with an intensity that didn't leave any other voids and once Madhu arrived, her bliss was complete.
Except, things changed.
When Madhu was two, Balraj lost his job. He was fired for no fault of his except his manager needed to assign blame on someone junior. He was humiliated because he was poor, under-educated and unreliable. His confidence was dented because he couldn't find another job for months. Padmini started giving tuition to children to support the household, and Balraj started drinking. Slowly, the alcohol solidified the bitterness inside him into something much more permanent and corrosive. He kept getting fired from one odd job after another because he was distracted, incompetent and started showing up to work drunk.
One day, Padmini tried to stop him from drinking. That was the first day he hit her. Padmini wiped her tears and tried again the next day because she was sure the Balraj she was seeing wasn't the man she fell in love with, and that she could fix him. So she tried the next day, and the day after that, and everyday until it was clear to everyone except Padmini herself that the bitterness inside Balraj had corroded and eaten away his love for his wife and daughter. But Padmini still believed Balraj's present behavior was erroneous and that her love and understanding could heal him and bring back the man she had married. Madhu was only a child, but she had a clear memory of her mother drinking away her tears and putting a brave smile for everyone, especially Madhu, as if nothing was wrong.
Some traits are genetic.
Padmini's belief was shattered, but still not destroyed, the day her husband's violence changed from being merely physical to sexual. Even Madhu knew from the screams in the night that had woken her up that something had fundamentally changed in her mother the next morning. That was the day Madhu felt her mother become extra protective for her. That was the day Madhu remembered as feeling afraid of her father for the first time. Several months later, Manav was born, and Madhu instinctively inherited her mother's need to protect him at all costs. Three years later, Padmini passed away, leaving Madhu all alone to look after Manav in what was by then a dysfunctional household.
They said Padmini died of a long illness, but her true affliction was unreasonable, unending, delusional hope.
Unfortunately, Madhu seemed to have inherited more than just her mother's beauty and now, the same delusional hope that killed her mother was threatening to kill her.
If only, she hadn't allowed herself to hope.
Madhu ran to her room and tried to bolt the door, when her fingers stopped. She couldn't close the door, could she? Did she have the rights to do that? She was a slave. An object RK had bought and kept in this room in this house for some time, at his pleasure. She did not have the right to privacy as she grieved. She did not have the right to cry when she was hurting and to die when she felt she couldn't live. She did not have the right to do, say or breathe anything without permission. She did not have the right to dream. She knew all that when she came here three months ago, didn't she? How had she forgotten?
How had she forgotten that she wasn't supposed to be Madhu any more? She was Mitasha.
Madhu skidded off the door and collapsed on the floor. Why, her heart screamed.
"What did I do to deserve this, God? What made some men the owner of my life and my destiny? What did I do that turned me from a human being into a mere object?" she questioned aloud even though she knew no answers would arrive. There was no such thing as a God in a world where so much heartlessness, sin and dehumanization flourished.
There, on the floor, she wept bitterly for hours. One by one, every dream she had ever seen since childhood, every hope she had nursed in a secret corner of her heart and every piece of delusional crap she had forced herself to believe floated in front of her eyes and burnt away. She would never get a PhD. She would never be a professor and teach students. She would never be loved. She would never be married. She would never have children. She would never be able to build a school in her town in the memory of her mother. She would never be able to build a home to call her own. She would never be able to see Manav grow up in front of her eyes, have a family and a career. She would never travel the world. She would never be respected. By anyone. She would never be saved from the traps of prostitution. She would never be good friends with Rishabh.
She would never be Madhubala Malik again.
She hated herself for trusting Mukund. For thinking that his care and affection translated to love. For hoping for a future with him.
She hated herself even more for trusting Rishabh. For thinking that his care and affection translated to something more respectful than the truth of their relationship. For keeping a hope alive inside her for a future, for any future, that was free and happy.
She wished Mukund had killed her that night. She wished her father had killed her before that, the night he had died. She wished she had died instead of her mother.
But she wasn't that lucky.
Madhu crouched into a fetal position on the floor. The tears had started to empty her eyes, but her pain was submerging her soul in it. There was no way out any more. There were no defenses left to protect her. Vulnerable, lonely and abandoned, Madhu shivered on the floor as words echoed in her head.
"Promise me Madhu, you'd do everything you can to protect Manav." her dying mother had asked a seven-year old girl. How fair was that?
"Don't worry Madhu. You have me. You can trust me. I'll take care of you and Manav." Mukund had said as she stood in front of her father's dead body, numbed with shock. How deceitful was that?
"The world's ugly Madhu. And we are its ugliest worst-kept secret. The sooner you believe that, the less hurt you'd be. People are good to other people only so long as they're of some use to them." Roma di had said, but Madhu hadn't truly listened or believed. She trusted too much in basic goodness of people, in a human connection. How ignorant was that?
"It's going to be ok." RK had said two days ago, holding her in am embrace that felt safe, and she had believed him. How foolish was that?
"Why would you promise something like that to me, Rishabh?" Madhu felt an anger bubble up "...when you knew all along that you were going to send me back to that hell where men are free to scratch away at my body to satisfy my urges?"
"Our contract was for three months..."
"...you can come Tuesday evening and take her."
"Why did you allow me to feel like a human being again? Why were you nice to me? Why did you keep the Madhu in me alive when you knew all along you were going to kill her in three months?"
Madhu clenched her eyes and tried to erase every good memory she had built with him in the last three months. She tried to forget how she felt when he touched her, she tried to forget her generosity when he took her to Manav, she tried to forget the sound of his voice, she tried to forget the comfort of his embrace, she tried to forget every conversation with him that made her feel like an individual...
Madhu kept working her way backwards through her pile of memories, but slowly, she felt her anger at RK dissipate. And then, she reached the night he had cried in her arms. He was helpless and broken and it had affected her to the level that she allowed herself to feel again. She did that, not him. He did not force her into her delusions. He did not give her hope, she took it. He was in pain. She volunteered to heal it. He was just nice to her. But he didn't have to be.
If she forgot in all of this the nature of the transaction that brought her here, it was her fault, not his. He had a difficult life of his own and she probably only added to his problems. She always knew she'd have to leave the house, then what was the problem in leaving in two days. Well, the problem was that she had somehow believed she would not return to Tony and to the world of prostitution when she'd leave, but that was her fault. There was no reason for that belief. RK had never promised her anything, so what was the point accusing him of anything.
It takes a wh**e to know a wh**e
RK had said to Dipali. It was the truth. She was a wh**e. That was her identity. Not one she had chosen, but so what?
RK was insulting Dipali, not her. About her, he just stated a fact. He had met her as a woman who was on sale, and he had bought her. He was nicer to her than he had to be, for sure. But he didn't make her a wh**e. In fact, it was because of his kind behavior and generosity that she had forgotten she was a wh**e.
At the end of the day, she may be a victim, but Rishabh wasn't the accused in the trial of the crimes against her.
She'd be damned though, if she knew who was.
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